When the update manager tells me that there are updates available, and how many, I click on the icon and give the password. It then automatically does another refresh, which takes a while. Although I understand that it wants the most up-to-date information, there never are any more updates than it said at first so is there any way to disable this auto-refresh and just get on with downloading and installing the updates themselves? I seem to remember ubuntu doing this. Thanks for any help.

When you run mintupdate for the first time after logging in, it is just in notification mode. In order to install updates it has to have sudo permissions hence it has to ask for you p/w. Once this is done it shouldn't ask again in that session unless you quit it completely.

[Edit] your original post and add [SOLVED] once your question is resolved.

“The people are my God” stressing the factor determining man’s destiny lies within man not in anything outside man, and thereby defining man as the dominator and remoulder of the world.

Thanks for the reply, remoulder. I understand (and agree with) the need for password authentication before installing updates, I just want it to skip the automatic refresh which it does first. For instance, as I write the 'i' icon has come up saying '6 recommended updates available (2MB)'. If I click on it, after giving my p/w it will do a refresh and come up with 6 updates available totalling 2MB. Since it knows this already, I'd like it to just get on with displaying them for my approval. The refresh sometimes takes quite a long time (and sometimes not - I don't know why). It isn't vitally important, just a bit irritating, especially because, if I remember correctly, when I was using Ubuntu before moving to Mint, the updater did exactly what I want!

Yes I understand the frustration with the 2nd refresh. I wasn't clear in my reply that it does this because it has to restart in root mode, iow running as a different user. You can use the ubuntu updater if you wish but will have to install it. If you do that you should untick the mint updater in startup apps.

[Edit] your original post and add [SOLVED] once your question is resolved.

“The people are my God” stressing the factor determining man’s destiny lies within man not in anything outside man, and thereby defining man as the dominator and remoulder of the world.

I found, that the refresh usually didn't take a lot of time. Now it takes several minutes. The refresh only downloads some 30 MB of data, which seems a lot. Often the actual update is just a fraction of that. I have now seen this on Mint 12, Ubuntu 11.10 & 12.04.

On previous Mint versions the refresh seemed a lot quicker (= less data downloaded for the refresh). Any idea why this has escalated?